What can I grow in a container?

[HillBill]

If you want to grow carrots then choose a variety that produces a shorter carrot. I don't think the very short ones are worth growing but there's plenty of stumpy ones. They do well for us in pots, the carrot fly seem to leave them alone as well.

One thing I have found is the modern peat free composts don't seem to hang on to the nutrients for long so pots need more feeding.

If you companion plant carrots with alliums (onion, spring onion, garlic), the carrots keep the onion fly away and the onions keep the carrot fly away. Marigolds are also a good protective plant to have around crops as they deter a lot of insects. And if you have a pot or two of bush basil near your doors, they keep flies out of the house.

 

[HillBill]

Yep, I’m not a fan of peat-free composts. That’s the only drawback of growing in buckets too - you need to keep a close eye on watering levels. I always drill plenty of drainage holes in the bottom anyway, but they can dry out quickly in a hot greenhouse.

Always better to use a mulch. Straw works well, as does shredded carboard or paper. Stops them drying out so quickly. They also rot down and provide nutrients, but fairly negligible amounts in pot grown annuals due to a more limited time to do so. .

 

[slowworm]

If you companion plant carrots with alliums (onion, spring onion, garlic), the carrots keep the onion fly away and the onions keep the carrot fly away. Marigolds are also a good protective plant to have around crops as they deter a lot of insects. And if you have a pot or two of bush basil near your doors, they keep flies out of the house.

Sadly not in my experience. Carrots in the ground here suffer from slugs as well carrot fly and/or wire worm. Onions, for some reason, struggle to root in our soil. (No idea why, sets will not put down roots unless there is a large amount of compost mixed in).

I like the idea of companion planting and mix in large amounts of flowering plants but it doesn't seem to stop all the pests. For example, I can plant one gooseberry in a muddle of flowering plants and herbs etc and the sawfly will find it.I

For us, planting carrots in pots produces a much better crop.

 

[Keith_Beef]

Liquorice was grown in I believe Yorkshire? (Think pontifract cakes) May be wrong but definitely Liquorice farms were a thing once. I think it's mostly imported nowadays.....the way of all things British.

Absolutely correct, licorice was a profitable crop and was grown in West Yorkshire around Pontefract.

 

[haptalaon]

Peat's being vilified because the ptb are desperate to count it towards their carbon neutral/sink thing.

Peat grows easily pretty much anywhere damp (ahem, British Isles !) and it can, and is, commercially grown for horticulture, fuel and whisky making, but it's got so much opprobium slated agin it these days that folks feel guilty buying bales of it.

Much better to preserve and restore the peat bogs but commercially produce too. It can be treated like any other crop.

Oh that's a good idea. I always kind of assumed it took Lifespans to produce peat, hence its rarity and the difficulty of restoring it and the damage done when removed. If it's a viable crop, then thats an excellent solution

 

[Pattree]

Oh that's a good idea. I always kind of assumed it took Lifespans to produce peat, hence its rarity and the difficulty of restoring it and the damage done when removed. If it's a viable crop, then thats an excellent solution

Unfortunately it isn’t.

 

[haptalaon]

Unfortunately it isn’t.

That's a great link, thanks

> Peat soils accumulate at around 1mm every year so 1 metre of peat can take up to 1,000 years to form

That's what I had in mind for assuming you couldn't replicate peat quickly

 

[Toddy]

Yes, it can grow incredibly slowly, but in good conditions it grows much faster.

That's all part of the commercialisation bit....and the desperate push for an easy claim to be carbon neutral and it's use as the offset for not doing enough to make real change in our use of fossil fuels otherwise.

Peat is the ultimate plant succession. It grows worldwide. I met a biologist years ago who worked everywhere from the tundra to Africa, from New Zealand to the Himalayas. Peat is everywhere.

Most of the damage to Scotland's peat is actually the burning to the heather that keeps the hunting shooting crowd happy....the moors are burned regularly and that damages the peat while keeping the heather regrowing to feed grouse, etc.,

It's use as fuel is as valid as woodburning, and in a land with no trees was the only fuel available.

There's no 'one size fits all'.
Peat as a crop is sustainable, but you need to look at beyond the screaming celebrity hype to find the other side.

"In Scotland, a small area of peatland (1-2,000 hectares from a total peatland area of over 2 million hectares across the country) is used for commercial peat extraction. Most is used for horticulture, a small amount for fuel and around 1% is used in the malting process of whisky production."
ScotGov.

I believe and support the restoration of many of the peat bogs, but we need agriculture too, and a lot of the lowland bogs in Scotland and England were drained to produce good arable land.....land we still need and use.
Commercial sites have to restore their land, much like the opencast coal pits did. It's to their advantage to do so, because they can then crop it again.

Do I use peat ?
Yes.
After years of using alternative and constantly having to riddle through to remove plastic waste, etc., I give up. It's horrible stuff, it's polluted.
I tried the coconut fibre.....it's horrible, it's not native, it's infected with a white fungus too. I tried the cocoa waste, again not native, smells wonderful and it doesn't break down well. It's fine as a top dressing but that's it.
I tried the shredded paper, again it's polluted, ink, plastic, etc......and then there's peat. It works, it's clean, it is sustaintable, but it's use is filled with all the umbrage of the screaming banner headlines.

The reality is that we actually use a tiny percentage of the peat bogs for horticulture, and we'd be much better off to accept it as a crop and restore while still working to repair peat bogs as and where possible.....and that includes the high grouse moors.

I compost every thing I can. From leaf litter to veg peelings, from prunings to the old pot fill. I have three active bins and two active dalek type ones....they are worm worked and they make beautiful sustainable, and clean, compost.
I use peat to over winter things like begonias, to mix to make the water retention compost for my seed trays and houseplants.

I've tried the alternatives. They're carp.
I actually grow peat ....I'm on heavy clay soil, we're always damp.....and I deliberately grew spaghnum moss just to see.
It grows like a weed and cheerfully overflows pots. It rots down below and only the top green layer is growing. I lifted off the top layer and after a year there was an accumulation of about an inch of dark rust brown peat below. Very open and porous, but it was peat. Compressed down it was still more than the claim of less than a mm a year.

So, up to yourselves, but I'm fed up of the rubbish alternatives. I prefer to have what would actually grow here, and I am getting to old to riddle through sacks of compost to take out post consumer plastic. I refuse to add that stuff to my garden if I can at all avoid it.

 

[Toddy]

While I mind; if you want something native that works like peat, then scarify your lawn or let the moss grow on boulders and peel that off. Break it up and work it into your compost and it'll act just like most peat. Good peat ought to come with rough stems in it too, but mostly it's sieved out and a lot of the modern stuff is just the fine dust of rotted leaves. In many cases the moss mixed through for pots is a very good option. You need to have a damp garden to grow it easily though, but I can easily gather two sack loads a year from my garden alone.

M

 

[TeeDee]

 

[Stew]

Interesting to see the breakdown of costs there. Of course for the next year he should be more profitable as well.

I've thought about totting up costs before but thought I might not like the answer!

 

[Laurentius]

My allotment is a victim of climate change, the intensity of floods has been increasing in level and intensity and so I have resorted to growing stuff in hippo bags filled with a basic layer of logs and brash and compost on top of that. Been very productive for spuds so far and next year I am going to branch out with leeks and beetroot which I have previously grown successfully in containers.

 

[Kadushu]

I get B&Q multipurpose compost and their bags of farmyard manure and mix it roughly 2:1. The result is a very useable compost. You can use the farmyard manure neat for most fruit and veg since it's well rotted and they are hungry but that works out quite expensive. I'm strictly talking about bagged garden centre manure here, not fresh manure which is a whole other kettle of fish.

Wickes used to sell peat free compost that was so awful I used it as weed suppressing mulch. Nothing grew in it!

 

[TeeDee]

Interesting to see the breakdown of costs there. Of course for the next year he should be more profitable as well.

I've thought about totting up costs before but thought I might not like the answer!

I think beyond the actual cost in - cost out calculation there is something more inherently ethos based in this type of small scale ( relatable for most ) set up.

The notion of growing and using ones own food is something for many that is diminishing in the Western world - ( apart from areas of Mainland Europe ) it seems.

Growing ones own food is more then the cost analysis - there is probably a better connection to the food we consume , caring about the quality and understanding the whole seasonal process better. If children were involved in the gardening I hope it would be a fostering of a food chain connection at an early age via the involvment. I know many think a gardening club at school level is a good idea but equally and pragmatically there are only so many school hours in a day and its not on the curriculum.

Unfortunately if one was to do this in most front gardens in the UK it wouldn't be seen as something beneficial or 'normal' ( whatever that is) - it seems far more acceptable to have a large trampoline and chocked up wheel less car covered in moss.

I do wonder if any positive critique could be made of the gentlemens set up? from more experienced gardeners - did it seems his set up was optimised and if not why?

 

[Toddy]

If he'd cut back his hedges he'd have had more room and more light. Room for another couple of planters or use the hedge height for climbers or fruit canes.

He did very well with what he had though, and it seems that he and his wife really enjoyed the whole growing/eating part of the process

I don't see why a tidy front garden needs to be just a floral display. I like seeing folks growing food

 

[gibson 175]

I think beyond the actual cost in - cost out calculation there is something more inherently ethos based in this type of small scale ( relatable for most ) set up.

The notion of growing and using ones own food is something for many that is diminishing in the Western world - ( apart from areas of Mainland Europe ) it seems.

Growing ones own food is more then the cost analysis - there is probably a better connection to the food we consume , caring about the quality and understanding the whole seasonal process better. If children were involved in the gardening I hope it would be a fostering of a food chain connection at an early age via the involvment. I know many think a gardening club at school level is a good idea but equally and pragmatically there are only so many school hours in a day and its not on the curriculum.

Unfortunately if one was to do this in most front gardens in the UK it wouldn't be seen as something beneficial or 'normal' ( whatever that is) - it seems far more acceptable to have a large trampoline and chocked up wheel less car covered in moss.

I do wonder if any positive critique could be made of the gentlemens set up? from more experienced gardeners - did it seems his set up was optimised and if not why?

In my limited veg growing experience it seemed an optimised set up for what he wanted to grow. I would add that his garden must get plenty of light. My garden was north facing and it made a REAL difference-stuff didn't grow as well as in my mate's south facing garden.